


Fractured

by Lexalicious70



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: AU, M/M, Mindwipe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:47:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24632539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexalicious70/pseuds/Lexalicious70
Summary: After the appearance of the Beast at Brakebills, Dean Fogg mindwipes and expels Quentin, but Eliot has a promise to keep. With Margo in tow, they set out to find and protect their vulnerable friend from the monster in the mirror, one that is determined to put an end to the young magician.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 33
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fishydwarrows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishydwarrows/gifts).



> This is for @fishydwarrows, as a thank you for all the wonderful things they do to raise money for charity and for sharing their wonderful artwork with the world. Thank you! Check out their Twitter, @wow_then, and order a unique and beautiful commission. I don’t own The Magicians, this is just for fun. Check out the rest of my works here and follow me on Twitter @Neptunes_Net. Comments and kudos are magic and, as always, enjoy!

_ “How about I find you, and I don’t say magic is real but I do seduce you and so lift your spirits that life retains its sparkle for decades.” --Eliot Waugh to Quentin Coldwater, 01x02.  _

CHAPTER ONE

“So that’s it. Just like that, he’s gone.” 

Eliot stood at the Physical Kids cottage bar, glaring at Margo as she reached for a bottle of wine and a glass. 

“Don’t look at me like that! Shooting the messenger isn’t going to help and you knew it was going to happen! Despite what we want, Fogg made the decision and you know what he’s like!” 

“We should have found a way to stop him!” Eliot sloshed several shots of dark amber liquid into a tumbler, drained it, and grimaced like a child forced to take strong medicine. “Instead we just stepped back and let them mindwipe and expel Quentin like he was a magicless nobody!” 

Margo frowned as she filled her glass with pink moscato. 

“El, no offense but honestly? We barely knew him.” 

Eliot closed his eyes as that afternoon on the back patio came back to him--Quentin’s agony, his dark eyes brimming with tears, Elliot sharing the story of how he’d used his telekinesis to kill his childhood tormentor, Logan Kinnear, his own heart soothed as gratitude replaced the pain in Quentin’s expression. Eliot was still a bit unsure of his own motives, as he’d never shared a secret with someone simply because he wanted them to feel better. That compulsion or ability or whatever Oprah would call it had never been a part of his mental wheelhouse. 

At least not until he’d met Quentin. 

“Hey!” Margo broke into Eliot’s thoughts. “Are you listening to me?” 

“Yeah.” Eliot poured two more fingers of scotch and added a single ice cube. “Just--I spent more time with him than you did and something about him--” 

“He’s a first-year boy. You’ll get yourself another next semester, El.” 

“No!” Eliot emptied his glass and slammed it down on the bar. The ice rattled around inside like a heavy coin in an empty piggy bank. “It’s more than that, Margo! That thing--the one that tried to kill him and blinded Dean Fogg--do you think it’s going to just go away because Quentin was sent away? It’s going to find him! Find him and kill him whether Quentin has his memories of this place or not because it eats magic, Margo! It stalks and eats our kind to absorb the magic and we can’t just stand here and argue about how well we knew him and if that makes him deserving of our help! He’s out there, mind-wiped and helpless--are we really going to stand here and do nothing?” 

Margo took a long sip from her glass, set it down, and folded her arms across her chest. 

“So you’re determined to chase this kid down, is that it?” 

“Yes.” 

“And literally nothing I can say will stop you?” 

“Nothing springs to mind.” 

“What will you do without me?” 

“Drink alone, get overly maudlin, and likely get myself killed without your shrewd wisdom and insight?” 

Margo’s dark eyes widened. 

“You are such an asshole.” 

“So noted.” 

Margo held his gaze and when it didn’t waver, she swore softly and picked up her wine glass to sip from it. 

“So then where do we start, for fuck’s sake?” 


	2. Chapter Two

_What do you do when every song you hear and every sight you see reminds you of a life you aren’t sure you remember yet you know it’s where you belong?_

  
Quentin paused in his journaling as rain hit his kitchen window, first in hesitant drops then more insistent ones that left long smears of moisture behind. The view outside that window faced the apartment complex’s courtyard and the property itself was a 20-minutes bus ride to the ocean and the comic book and gaming store Quentin worked at, but still . . .

  
_I feel like someone slapped a giant painted canvas over what should be_ , he continued to write. _Like when Wile E. Coyote paints fake roads and tunnels to try and fool the Roadrunner. Like I could rip it away and see the reality underneath._

  
Quentin’s single-cup coffee maker announced the end of its cycle with a brief shriek and a long wheeze, pulling Quentin from his thoughts. He capped his good pen, (always treat your writing instruments with respect,) and fetched the cup before adding a dollop of milk. The sound of the early-March shower was of little comfort to Quentin despite the pleasant sound, as were his neat and comfortable surroundings that didn’t match his constant unease and a longing for another place; it was like wearing someone else’s borrowed clothing without knowing where they came from or when you put them on.

  
Huntington Beach, California: a mecca for surfers, vacationers, and those who felt drawn to the Pacific Ocean. It was also Quentin’s home and had been for several months, at least as far as he could figure. He’d woken up in a nearby hospital where a kindly doctor told him the tale of a biking rental, a steep hill, and a defective brake line. The accident, which apparently had happened while Quentin was at the beach on vacation, resulted in head injuries and the bike company settled for a hefty amount, thanks to a lawyer who saw Quentin’s story in the paper, as he had a son Quentin’s age. The doctor who’d treated Quentin told Ted Coldwater, Quentin’s father, that Quentin might suffer from memory problems his whole life and the days leading up to the accident might be forever blank. Quentin had accepted this because other than his memories of Brooklyn, his parents, and preparing for grad school, he remembered little else. A few phone calls to his father revealed that accounts for his rent and other needs had been set up during his unconsciousness and that yes, his father had agreed to let the lawyer handle everything. Once Quentin felt well enough to work, his doctor’s head shift nurse put him in contact with her son's best friend, who owned a comic shop near Huntington Pier. Since grad school was no longer an option for him, Quentin took a job there as a shelver and inventory assistant. His settlement paid the bills and delivered a sizable chunk of money into his checking account each month, but still . . .

  
Why did his gaze linger over the Magic: The Gathering card packs when he unboxed them at work? Why did he wander a verdant maze dotted with fountains each time he slept? Why was he living in an unshed skin that no longer held the totality of his existence?

  
“It is 10 a.m.,” his digital assistant announced from a nearby shelf. Quentin sighed, dumped his coffee into a travel tumbler, and grabbed his backpack as he jogged out of the building and down the block to catch the bus.  
Quentin’s bus spat him out on Main Street, less than 20 yards from the entrance of Huntington Pier. The rain seemed to be keeping early tourists away but a few hardy surfers braved the waves under a sky the color of wet concrete. Quentin walked diagonally until the pier was at his back and a row of storefronts faced him. One of them featured a sharp red awning, like a cape, and the sign above it read POW! outlined in jagged blue, like the letters in a comic. The front door stood propped open and Quentin hurried inside.

  
“Hey Alan, am I late?” He asked, and the 40-something owner of the shop looked at Quentin over his rimless spectacles, looking to Quentin like an annoyed 19th-century barrister.

“Almost.” He glanced at the clock over Quentin’s head, one that featured Batman smashing his way out of the background, one gauntlet-covered fist threatening. “But I guess you got a minute or two.”

  
“Thanks.” Quentin tossed his backpack behind the counter. Alan glanced outside, where drizzle had graduated into a steady shower.

  
“Shit’s gonna keep the townies away,” he grumbled, and Quentin clocked in on the digital tan box just inside the breakroom--a term Quentin found laughable, as the room contained unboxed inventory, an aging Pepsi machine, a wobbly card table, and two mismatched cushioned chairs with the pattern all but rubbed away. He usually wandered the pier at lunch if it wasn’t too crowded and read a book on one of the benches there, as the windowless breakroom poked at his anxiety when he was in it for too long.

  
“You can unbox these for a start,” Alan said as he tapped a few unopened boxes of comics. “Then give the shelves a dusting, if you would--son, are you sleeping okay? You look hella tired, no offense.”

  
“I’m okay . . . just weird dreams. Like my memories are trying to come back in my sleep.”

  
“Well you’ve been through the ringer, maybe it’s gonna happen that way.”

  
“Maybe.” Quentin popped open the first container. “Just--it’s really weird to be living here without completely knowing why.”

  
“What’s your dad say?”

  
“He won’t talk about it on my doctor’s orders. They say it could trigger traumatic memories about the accident, and that it’s enough for me to know that I moved here because it’s what’s best for me.” Quentin lifted the box. “And because the climate is better for me than Brooklyn.”

  
“Well that I gotta agree with,” Alan nodded.

  
“But it’s like I was never accepted to Yale at all,” Quentin said as he went about setting out comics by their titles from A-Z.

  
“Maybe it’s hard for your old man to talk about it. And there’s nothing wrong with your cognitive skills--you alphabetize faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

  
“Letters are kind of my thing. I’m pretty sure I wanted to go into library science or maybe literature.”

  
“Maybe the universe knew we needed you here,” Alan said with a too-wide smile, and Quentin forced one in return.

  
“It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Broken Brain Man?”

  
“Why not? Even Batman had his issues, kid.”

  
A group of teens entered the shop then, shaking off the rain, ending the conversation and leaving Quentin to his work.

****  
The rain moved off before lunch but left the sky a slate grey with a few smeary ivory clouds, like a child’s crayon drawing. Quentin clocked out, grabbed a hot dog from the nearby Johnny Rockets, and headed down the pier. As always, he admired how the water swirled around the pier supports, the shape of the waves as they curled into the shore, and the squat shapes of pelicans that perched near the men who came to fish. He munched on his hot dog (extra mustard and pickles,) and paused to watch the surfers come in from the larger waves that built past the end of the pier. The waves weren’t very large but the group of young men cruised on what was there.

One of them, in particular, caught Quentin’s eye--tall, slender, a head full of wet, dark curls. Quentin’s lips formed a silent word of their own volition, although he wouldn’t have recognized it. Amber eyes, full of haughtiness and wit, filled his memory all at once and then departed so quickly it left tears in his eyes. Quentin stumbled against the railing, the last bite of his hot dog falling into the water, where an opportunistic seagull scooped it up. He staggered to a nearby bench and sat down hard, ignoring its dampness. He put both hands to his temples, his head pulsing with the retreating  
(memory? Vision?)  
Image, and he moaned.

  
“What’s wrong with me?” He asked the empty pier, but the only answer was the steady tick-tick of a wind-driven metallic spinner hanging outside one of the small tourist booths that dotted the pier. Quentin watched it spin as the surf crashed in behind him.“God . . . am I going crazy?”


	3. Chapter Three

“Are you sure this guy isn’t going to screw us?”

  
Margo and Eliot sat on the steps of a large fountain in Columbus Circle, watching tourists and natives alike pass by. Eliot lifted a shoulder.

  
“I guess we have to wait and see if he’s willing to trade with us, if he shows up at all.”

  
“Have you ever heard of a spell like this, though? One that can find a mindwiped magician?”

  
“Fogg knows one--they keep it just in case the school decides to unwipe someone. So I know it exists. We just need a copy, that’s all.” He unslung a leather bag with a canvas strap from one shoulder and Margo’s eyes widened.

  
“Is that--”

  
“Yeah.”

  
“El, why?”

  
“I--I suppose I want to keep it for him.” Eliot laid a hand on Quentin’s Sharo bag. “I’m sure he’ll want it back.” He unbuckled the largest compartment. “A dozen spells, four potions, and a bottle of ‘97 Resiling. My lips never knew thee, my love!” He sighed.

  
A man in his 30s, long reddish hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, approached them with a box of pins. “Souvenir pins?” He asked, and Eliot caught a glimpse of several hedge tattoos on one of the man’s wrists.

  
“Oh . . . well, let me see here.” Eliot got to his feet. “Maybe my bag could use one or two.” He gave the buttons a ruffle with one hand, revealing a white envelope sealed with a wax stamp. It was a touch hedge witches often used but Eliot found dramatic, a kind of put-on affectation that seemed common to the breed in Manhattan.

“Spells, potions, a good bottle of wine: take your pick,” he said as he touched the envelope but the hedge tugged it away.

  
“You snobs at Brakebills really think you’ve got it over on us.”

  
“I’m not here for hedge witch propaganda, I’m here to trade for a spell,” Eliot responded. “Our binder holds one dozen you won’t find anywhere else. I’ll give you access to three, plus one potion.”

  
“All twelve, and all three potions,” the hedge countered, and Eliot responded with a cool chuckle.

  
“You haven’t got that much of a corner on the market, sweetie.”

  
“Don’t see anyone else offering,” the hedge sneered, and Eliot picked out a smiley face button from the collection.

  
“No. I suppose there isn’t,” Eliot said as he glanced around. “But do you know who’d be willing to make a most generous trade with me? Other hedges--hedges who will then have an edge over you in the community. Maybe even several. Or you can gain that edge by giving us a reasonable offer.”

  
The hedge hesitated.

  
“Four spells and two potions, plus future bargaining rights. You don’t sell to anyone else.”

  
“Five, one, and you get first dibs at any new spells that we learn.”

  
Deal!” The hedge nodded, and Margo pulled out a small binder.

  
“And don’t get any stupid ideas about running off with this. It’s charmed to turn your skin into so much running pus if it knows it’s being stolen.”

  
“Oh.” The hedge took it as one might handle a grenade. “Got it.” He chose his spells and potion, and Eliot took the envelope, breaking the seal and glancing inside.

  
“Excellent.” He dropped a dollar into the button box and fastened the happy face pin to the strap of Quentin’s bag. Margo returned the binger to its hiding place.

  
“We’re done here,” she announced, and the hedge nodded before dashing away across the square.

  
“So, where did you get a skin melting spell?” Eliot asked, and Margo scoffed.

  
“From my Big Rolodex of Bullshit. Like it’s my fault these hedges don’t realize we’re still learning too.”

  
Eliot headed for the shelter of a nearby tree before pulling the spell from its envelope.

  
“Beechnut ash, ground beetle shells, four of Quentin’s hairs--shit!”

  
“I loaned Q a brush last week when he couldn’t find his comb--I think I tossed it in a drawer when he was done. And Van Der Whig keeps a shit ton of potion ingredients in the P.A. lab.” Margo waved her hand and clicked open an imaginary lock.

  
“I hope this works,” Eliot sighed as he tucked the spell away. Margo put an arm around him as they headed for a quiet spot where they could make a portal back to Brakebills.

  
“If not, we always have the Reisling.”

****  
Quentin returned to work after his dizzy spell on the pier and didn’t mention it to Alan--he was nice enough but sometimes too fatherly for Quentin’s comfort. He finished his work, clocked out at five p.m., and boarded the bus that would drop him off a block from his apartment complex. An unpleasant throb persisted at the back of his neck, like a hungry tick feeding there. Quentin unlocked his apartment door as he rubbed at the spot. He flicked on the lights, tossed down his backpack, and went to the fridge for a soda. The cans rumbled and shifted as he pulled one from the cardboard cube and popped it open. He wished, as he often did, that the complex allowed animals. He’d had a tuxedo cat as a boy, a gentle neutered tom they’d called Edgar, but the cat had died of old age when Quentin was a high school sophomore.

  
“Be nice to have something that needs me,” Quentin muttered as he flopped down on the couch. Behind him, unseen, a pale hand reached out from an oval wall mirror, the surface seeming to stretch outward, then snapped back as if the owner of the hand wasn’t quite strong enough to break the barrier between worlds. Quentin set his drink aside, kicked off his shoes, and stretched out on the couch. The thing that had tracked him from another world to Brakebills to California could only lurk for now, marking Quentin with baleful, sunken eyes.

  
“I will find a way to reach you, Quentin Coldwater,” the thing purred to itself, but under the smooth tone, hunger roiled like boiling water. “To reach you and make you see just long enough for me to devour every inch of you!”  
Unaware of the danger, Quentin drifted off into fragmented dreams full of faces he could no longer recognize.

****

“Where in the hell are we?”

  
Eliot blinked as salty ocean spray hit his face and wood creaked beneath his feet. For one moment he thought Fogg had tucked Quentin away on some boat, but then he peered through the near-darkness as a stiff breeze lifted his curls.

  
“I think it’s a pier--”

  
Lamps flickered to life as their twilight timers clicked on, and Margo scowled.

  
“Jesus, make up your mind!” She snapped to no one in particular, and Eliot took a few steps toward the pier’s entrance/exit.

  
“Says here this is Huntington Beach, California--California!” Eliot frowned. “Goddamn Fogg, he sent Quentin to the opposite end of the country!”

  
“The spell isn’t 100 percent accurate, but if it sent us here, then he must be somewhere nearby.”

  
“We better get a hotel room, start fresh in the morning.” He glanced across the street and a multicolored sign caught his eye.  
“The Shorebreak . . . come on, let’s see if there’s a vacancy.”

  
“A vacancy with a decent shower and a bar!” Margo amended.

  
As the two wayward magicians made their way toward the hotel, they passed a comic book shop, its door shut and locked, the interior lights off. As Eliot passed by, the ghostly glow of a Batman clock on the wall, one huge fist smashing through the background, nabbed his attention. Eliot paused at the window, watching the black second-hand sweep around the dial until Margo tugged him toward the hotel.

  
The Shorebreak, as it turned out, did have several vacancies, as well as a pre-season sale on rooms. Eliot chose a 4th-floor room that looked out on the trendy main street below. To the right and directly across the street, the Pacific whispered to itself in the pre-dawn chill.

  
“Couldn’t sleep? Margo asked from the balcony door, her petite form wrapped in a white cotton robe.

  
“I guess not,” Eliot admitted, counting the colored lights hung across the balcony for what had to be the dozenth time.

  
“Look, El, I’m gonna say something and maybe it’ll piss you off--”

  
“That’s never stopped you before,” Eliot observed.

  
“Yeah well, you’ve never acted like this before.”

  
“Acted like what?”

  
“Like you finally went and fucked around and caught feelings for someone! El, I’m sorry this happened and that we never got to know Quentin but . . . aren’t we risking getting the brain bleach ourselves if Fogg finds out we’re doing this?”

  
“Yes, I suppose we are.”

  
“And that’s dangerous.”

  
“Mmmm.”

  
“And we’re risking our own ability to study and learn magic.”

  
“One could look at it that way.”

  
“One is looking at it that way! This one!” Margo pointed at herself. “And I can’t think of any other reason for you to do this, other than you caught feelings for this kid!”

  
“It’s not fair, that’s all. They can’t prove Quentin had anything to do with summoning that Beast!”

  
“Injustice has never stirred you before. We’ve seen dozens of first years get the axe . . . why are you sticking your neck out now?”

  
“You’re probably going to laugh, but all I can say is there’s something wrong about this. Quentin shouldn’t be out here, he should be back at Brakebills with us! I just feel like this is--it’s something that needs to be fixed!”

  
“Okay, slow down Dr. Beckett, and give Ziggy another smack because you have never believed in any kind of destiny before!”

  
“I’m not saying it’s destiny. At least not exactly . . .”

  
“Then what?”

  
“Remember how it was when you and I first met? After that first night we were sharing almost everything but I didn’t tell you about Logan Kinnear, at least not then. I didn’t reveal that until we went through the Trials together. When I saw Quentin crying and he asked me how he could live with himself after what happened, I told him everything.” Eliot looked up at the sky, where starlight was fading and giving way to cobalt-colored predawn skies. “And I can say it was the wine or the stress of what happened but honestly? I just wanted to make Quentin feel better. God, he looked so miserable and I wanted him to understand that people like us, well--we don’t have to be alone.”

  
“And did he accept that?” Margo asked.

  
“I think it at least offered him some comfort.”

  
“Maybe he’s carrying that with him now, even if he can’t remember.” Margo took Eliot’s hand, squeezed it. “Come on. Come spoon me and we’ll get some sleep.”

  
Eliot allowed Margo to lead him back into the room, glancing over his shoulder as the sky’s colors shifted from plum to the first touches of sweet peach.

****  
“Scuse me! Sorry! Shit--my fault!” Quentin called over his shoulder as he ran down Main Street, his backpack bouncing between his narrow shoulders, a cup of Starbucks in one hand. His watch read 9:59 a.m. and he cursed the a.m./p.m. button on the clock radio back at his apartment. Why didn’t he just use his phone alarm like everyone else?

  
“Because you’re an ass,” Quentin panted to himself as he ran past the souvenir store and the side entrance to the Shorebreak. “Because you’re an ass and you don’t think--sorry!” Quentin swerved to avoid a woman pushing a baby stroller as he cut through the sidewalk traffic like a skinny but determined linebacker.

  
Up on the 4th floor of the Shorebreak, Eliot sipped a cup of fragrant coffee tempered with hazelnut creamer as he watched people pass back and forth on Main Street. The rainy weather had moved off overnight, leaving the early-morning sky a deep turquoise color. People streamed in and out of storefronts and open shop doors and Eliot watched, the hairs on the back of his neck and arms stirring, as a lean figure with tawny hair darted down the sidewalk below, a green backpack bouncing against his back. Eliot slapped a hand to his mouth as that unmistakable floppy hair glinted with blond and copper strands.

  
“Margo!” He stepped into the hotel and grabbed Margo’s arm, tugging her onto the balcony as she juggled a coffee cup.

  
“El, Jesus, what the fuck?” She complained, and Eliot pointed.

  
“Look!”

  
Margo followed the finger and she set her coffee cup down on the decorative table nearby. A bit of liquid sloshed over the side and onto her hand and she cursed but her eyes never left Quentin’s form. She gripped Eliot’s arm with her other hand.

  
“It’s him! Holy shit El, that spell worked after all, it’s him!”

  
Eliot nodded, his throat thick with sudden emotion--shock, joy, guilt--that blocked his words. His eyes ate up Quentin’s form until it vanished through an open storefront door.

  
“We have to get down there before we lose sight of him!” Margo said and Eliot paused, a hand on her arm.

  
“Wait . . .”

  
“Wait for what? That thing is after him, El, we have to warn him!”

  
“He doesn’t remember us! He’ll either run away or think we’re crazy, maybe even call the cops! Not that I’d be too worried on that account, but we can’t call attention to ourselves!”

  
“So how do we warn him? Smoke signals? Anonymous carrier pigeon?” Margo asked, her hands on her hips, and Eliot’s worried expression suddenly smoothed.

  
“You trust me, right?”

  
“Would I be here instead of back at Brakebills like I should be if I didn’t?”

  
“Okay, point taken. And if you do, then you have to let me go down there alone.”

  
“Alone? And do what, exactly?”

  
Eliot took his friend’s small hands in his and kissed the top of her head.

  
“What you say I do best: seduce a first-year boy.”


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Changes" written by David Bowie, 1971.

Quentin hummed along to David Bowie’s “Changes” on the store’s sound system as he broke down empty comic book boxes and made alphabetized stacks of comics on the counter. Most of the major tourist flocks were still several months off and Alan was off on a buyer’s errand, leaving Quentin alone. The door stood open, kept in place by a concrete block Alan had scavenged from somewhere and painted it red, yellow and blue--superhero colors. As Quentin tossed another empty box behind the counter, the door sensor gave off a fussy, digital chime, signaling a customer. Quentin glanced up, paused, then looked again as Bowie filled up the space between himself and the visitor.

  
_“So I turned myself to face me, but I never caught a glimpse . . .”_

  
“Is--is there something I can help you find?” Quentin asked as he tried to remember to blink. The young man in the doorway was impeccably dressed, right down to a pair of two-tone suede shoes that were a far cry from the strappy sandals and flip-flops most of their clientele wore. His dark brunette hair, not quite ebony but not brown like his own, rioted with curls yet they seemed to fall in a way that suggested they’d been somewhat tamed with a bit of spray and a brush.

  
“I certainly hope you can,” the young man replied as he stepped inside, honey-colored eyes glancing about the store. “I’m shopping for a friend who enjoys comics, but I’m afraid I don’t know much about them myself. Do you think you might recommend something?” He asked as he stepped past Quentin to examine an Iron Man figurine. Quentin smelled cedar and something that reminded him of the incense his mother used to burn during the Christmas season  
(myrrh?)  
Only darker, smokier. It made Quentin want to pull the shop door shut and trap the scent.

  
“Uh--well sure, I can try. What does your friend like? Marvel, DC, manga, or something more indie?”

  
“Maybe if you let me know about these . . .” The stranger nodded at a display of graphic novels.

  
“These are graphic novels, uhm . . . they usually tell an expanded story or contain a series that was previously published in single installments.” Quentin took one down and opened it. “Most publishers put them out a few times a year or if the character’s anniversary is coming up.”

  
The young man stepped closer to turn a page. Something tightened in Quentin’s lower belly, like a wire stretched from nerve to nerve.

  
“How interesting. What do you like to read? A recommendation from an expert like yourself could be just the thing I need.”

  
“Oh.” Quentin felt his ears warm. “I’m not really an expert. My boss, uhm, he’s actually the owner and everything. I just stock and stuff.”

  
Eliot kept his eyes trained on the pages of the novel, although it could have held the answers to magic’s greatest mysteries or a recipe for beans on toast for all he cared. He’d found Quentin--he was here and alive and blushing in that same way that made Eliot want to give him the universe and then some. The desire to spill the story bubbled in Eliot’s chest, as did the compulsion to protect the younger man, but in his mind-wiped state, Eliot knew Quentin would think him crazy.

  
“Don’t underestimate yourself--I don’t believe I caught your name?”

  
“Oh--I’m Quentin.”

  
“I’m Eliot.” He offered a hand, which Quentin shook as he gave Eliot his usual two seconds of eye contact.

  
“It’s nice to meet you.”

  
“Same to you. I mean--yes, same here.” Quentin reshelved the graphic novel. “Uh, can I ask you something?”

  
“Only if it’s a personal question; revealing dark secrets about my past to people I’ve only just met is a kink of mine.” He watched as Quentin tried to form a reply. “That’s a joke. Ask away.”

  
“Just . . . you don’t seem like a tourist. Are you from HB?”

  
“Well spotted, Quentin. No . . . I’m from Upstate New York, where I go to university. I’m here to see the sights with a friend, we’re staying at the Shorebreak. That’s how I happened to find your shop.” Eliot spun a magnetic lazy Susan full of pop culture magnets as he spoke. “What about you?”

  
“I’m from Brooklyn.”

  
“You’re a long way from home.”

  
“Yeah . . . it’s a long story, and--” Quentin glanced at the clock. “My boss will be back soon.”

  
“And you’d better look busy?”

  
“Something like that.”

  
“Then I tell you what--come to the Shorebreak tonight, room 412. We’ll have a drink, you can meet my friend.”

  
“Oh. Uhm, well, I--”

  
“Don’t know me? I know, I could be an axe murderer, a serial killer, or worse, trying to recruit you into my MLM downline. But I’m none of those things, Quentin.” He plucked a business card from the pile on the counter, produced a pen from his pocket, and scrawled on its reverse: _Eliot Waugh--412_

“You can have them buzz my room when you get there. What time do you get off work?” He asked, and Quentin pushed a lock of hair behind one ear in such a familiar gesture that Eliot felt his chest constrict.

  
“Six.”

  
“Then let’s say eight.” Eliot passed him the card and Quentin glanced at the elegant script.

  
“I--all right, sure.” I can grab a bus back here later.”

  
“No car?”

  
“No.” Quentin shifted his weight. “I was in an accident a few months ago, on a bike, and it kind of rattled my brain. My memory is full of holes and sometimes I’m not too sure of what even happened that day.” Quentin’s dark eyes tipped up to Eliot’s amber ones. “Does that sound crazy?”

  
“No,” Eliot replied, struggling to keep his voice steady. “Just promise me something.”

  
“What?”

  
“That you won’t forget me between now and eight p.m.” Eliot moved toward the door and paused there. “Until then, Quentin Coldwater.”

  
The sensor over the door chimed as Eliot left. When Alan returned, Quentin said little of his encounter but wondered if his memory was playing tricks on him again.  
He couldn’t remember when he’d told Eliot his last name.

****

When his shift ended, Quentin took the bus home, showered, changed into a hunter-green Henley and fresh jeans, and was back on the bus to the pier by 7:45. The last pale light of day was fading over the Pacific, turning the roof of the restaurant at the end of the pier into burnished gold. Quentin turned toward the Shorebreak and ducked into the main entrance, fumbling out the card Eliot had given him and glancing at it as he tugged the lobby door open. A young Asian woman glanced up from the front desk.

  
“Welcome to the Shorebreak, may I help you?”

  
“Yeah hi, uh, can you buzz room 412 please? I think they’re expecting me.”

  
“Sure, one moment.” The woman picked up the desk phone’s receiver and tapped a few number pads with the eraser end of her pencil. Quentin glanced around the lobby at the overstuffed furniture as the muted song of waves meeting land rang in the near distance. The elevator door opened across the way and Eliot stepped out, wearing dark drainpipe jeans and a peach-colored button down. Quentin’s heart did a series of isometrics and he silently practiced a greeting as Eliot raised a hand and walked toward him. He moved like as sin you didn’t dare explore, even in incognito mode. Quentin’s carefully-planned greeting slipped away through one of the holes in his memory. He scrabbled for it as he felt his mouth open of its own accord.

  
“Howdy there!” He crowed, and his inner critic threw down its pad and pen, yanked off its glasses, and stormed out of the mental room. Eliot blinked at the greeting, wanting to cringe but one look at Quentin’s expression told him the kid was already punishing himself.

  
“Hi. You want to come up?” He asked, and Quentin nodded.

  
“Sure.” He realized he’d showed up empty-handed and that Eliot and his friend would probably think him rude. “I forgot to bring something. I’m sorry.”

  
“We have wine upstairs, it’s fine. C’mon.” Eliot led him toward the elevator and they stepped inside. Quentin groped for a conversation opener.

  
“So, uh, what do you think of the city?”

  
“It’s beautiful,” Eliot said as they rode up to the fourth floor. “Much cleaner than some of the other beach towns I’ve been to.”

  
“A lot of the citizens pick up trash themselves on the weekends. They take a lot of pride in the beach and pier.”

  
The elevator glided to a stop and Eliot led his guest to room 412, the numbers edged in gold. He keyed the door open.  
“We’re back!” He announced, and a petite woman about Eliot’s age glanced up from a fashion magazine. Something Quentin couldn’t decipher flickered across her face, which he might have given more thought to if he hadn’t been so struck by her beauty.

  
_Eliot called her a friend. Are they more than that?_ Quentin found himself distressed at the thought.

  
“Quentin, this is Margo Hanson. Margo, Quentin Coldwater.”

  
“Nice to meet you.” Quentin offered a hand, which Margo took with a confident grip.

  
“You too. I was just about to open a bottle of Moscato, you boys want to join me?”

  
“Absolutely!” Eliot nodded and Quentin paused, considering the meds he took, before nodding anyway.

  
“Sure, thank you.”

  
“So polite!” Margo said as she fetched three glasses from the kitchenette. Quentin watched, her body language and tone a puzzle. She moved with a kind of aggressive grace he’d never encountered before and her words had an edge that let Quentin know she could turn it outward if necessary or, more likely, if she encountered blatant stupidity.

  
“Thanks. Just how I was raised, I guess.” Quentin accepted the wine glass. “So how do you guys know each other?”

  
“School. Thanks.” Eliot nodded as he took the other glass.

  
“Post-grad classes?” Quentin asked, a pinprick of jealousy needling his chest, and Eliot nodded.

  
“It’s a rather specialized degree.”

  
Quentin thought of his own lost future at Yale and the dreams he sometimes had where he took a test filled with magic and calculus and what seemed like completely nonsensical questions, the place that shifted from memory to dream status each day.

  
“What about you?” Margo asked as she gestured for Quentin to sit.

  
“I went to Columbia for undergrad. I applied to Yale and got accepted, but . . .”

  
“But?” Margo prodded.

  
“I can’t really say what happened. It’s fragmented and I’m not sure which parts I really remember.”

  
“You mentioned an accident,” Eliot chimed in, and Quentin nodded.

  
“From what I understand, I came here on vacation after school ended to celebrate graduation. I rented a bike, but the brake line was faulty. I took a hill but couldn’t stop and I guess I flew off and landed in a ravine. I had some bad head injuries . . . I guess it messed up my memories and the doctors told my dad I might heal better out here.”

  
“Do you remember the accident?” Margo asked, and Quentin shook his head.

  
“I don’t even remember coming out here. My dad sued the bike company while I was unconscious . . . they said I was in a coma for nearly two months.”

  
“So . . . your dad just left you behind in a strange city, knowing you’d been hurt?” Margo asked. “Seems a bit harsh.”

  
“I’m not a kid, and despite my memory, I can take care of myself.”

  
“How old are you?” Margo challenged, and Quentin sat up a bit.

  
“I’ll be 22 in July . . . I finished my B.A. early with dual credits.”

“Don’t interrogate the lad, Margo,” Eliot said as he sat beside Quentin. “And that’s admirable, you finishing college early.”

  
“I just wish it wasn’t all for nothing,” Quentin sighed. “All that work and I can’t even earn my Masters.”

  
“I’m sorry,” Eliot replied, and his tone made Quentin glance up.

“Why? It’s not your fault.”

  
“It’s not yours either.”

  
“No.” Quentin dumped wine on the impulse to tell Eliot about the test he thought he remembered. Eliot and Margo exchanged a glance over his head.

_I need to tell him._

  
_It’s too soon._

  
“How long will you be in town?” Quentin asked suddenly, and Eliot waved a dismissive hand.

  
“It’s open-ended really. A few weeks, maybe more.”

  
“Will you come back to the store again? You never did pick out anything for your friend,”

  
“My--? Oh, yes! My shopping excursion.” Eliot refilled his glass and then added more to Quentin’s.

  
“Easy,” Quentin smiled. “I’m kind of a lightweight.”

  
“Is that right?” Eliot asked in an airy tone as he added another dollop of Moscato to Quentin’s glass. Margo stood.

  
“Excuse me,” she said as she vanished into the bathroom. Eliot opened his mouth to speak when Margo called out to him.

  
“Eliot, can I see you a moment?”

  
“Aren’t you in the bathroom?”

  
“Yes, and it’s important, please!”

  
Eliot gave a huff of exasperation and set his glass aside.

  
“Excuse me.” He went to the bathroom door, where Margo opened it wide enough to yank him inside before pushing it closed. Eliot frowned.

  
“This shirt is Italian, you know!”

  
“What do you think you’re doing?”

  
“I thought I was putting Q at ease before you dragged me in here.”

  
“By getting him drunk?” Margo put her hands on her hips. Eliot paused and glanced away from her knowing gaze. She put a hand on his arm.

  
“El, I know you want to protect him--”

  
“Yes, what the fuck else are we doing here?”

  
Margo nodded.

  
“I get the frustration too but do you think getting Q drunk is the best way to protect him?”

  
“I suppose I thought if he was drunk enough, we could talk him into maybe . . .”

  
“Crashing here with us?”

  
“He wouldn’t be alone! We could keep that thing away from him!”

  
“Are you sure that’s even possible, El?”

  
“We have to at least try!”

  
Margo pinched the bridge of her nose with two fingers.

  
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this--alcohol isn’t going to help!”

  
“Uhm . . . hello?” Quentin asked from the other side of the door. “Is everything okay in there?”

  
Eliot turned and shushed Margo, who elbowed him for his efforts. He scowled and flapped a hand at her before opening the bathroom door.

  
“Yes! Yes . . .everything’s fine. Margo couldn’t find her, ah . . .”

  
“Toothbrush,” Margo put in, and Eliot nodded.

  
“Toothbrush. You know how it is, when you’re sure you packed something and then you can’t find it. But we did . . . we found it. Did you want some more wine?” Eliot asked, then flinched as Margo booted his ankle.

“No thanks. Uh, I’d better go, actually, I have to work in the morning.”

“But it’s still early.” Eliot stepped out of the bathroom and put a hand on Quentin’s arm. “Surely you can stay a bit longer. We’ll order something from room service to offset our liquid diet.” Eliot flashed a smile as he allowed his hand to linger.

  
“Well . . .” Quentin thought of his apartment, where he’d otherwise eat a frozen pizza nuked in the microwave, the outer crust hard but the middle still cool, while re-reading a Star Trek or Fillory novel for the 20th time. Alone. “Some food sounds good.”

  
“Excellent.” Eliot fished through the room’s desk until he found the room service menu. “What’s your pleasure, Quentin?”

****

“ . . . So she left on a painting sabbatical to Europe and it just kind of never ended. After about two years, my dad accepted she wasn’t coming back and they divorced. I was nine, maybe ten.”

  
The Pacific punctuated Quentin’s words as he and Eliot sat out on the room’s balcony, a bottle of wine between them on the wrought-iron table. Just inside the door, the kitchenette counter held the remains of a large room service meal. Margo dozed on the suite’s roomy couch, so Eliot and Quentin had moved onto the balcony so their talking wouldn’t wake her. It was chilly but tolerable.  
“I’m sorry,” Eliot said as he lit a cigarette with a silver rectangular lighter, both sides engraved with a stylized E. “That must have been hard on you both.” The cigarette’s ember flared briefly in the dark.

  
“It’s kind of weird. We never really talked about it, even when I got older. My mom would send Christmas cards and sometimes a card with a check for me on my birthday if she remembered to but other than that, my dad and I just kind of . . . went on.”

  
“Do you talk to him much now?”

  
“We text, he calls once a week but I’m not great with talking on the phone. These awkward silent moments always make me feel like I’m failing at basic human communication.”

  
“You do just fine. Margo likes you and believe me, her liking anyone isn’t a common occurrence.”

  
“How can you tell?” Quentin asked, and Eliot suppressed a smile as he thought of Margo proclaiming, “He’s not that cute!” upon her and Quentin’s first meeting. Except he had been, and Margo knew it, and Eliot mentally cursed Henry Fogg again for exiling someone who fit against both his and Margo’s difficult edges.

  
“You’ll have to trust me on that one.”

  
Quentin smiled and then sat up a little as he realized the sky was no longer ebony and shot through with bright chips of stars but a purple-blue, the horizon edged with a thin suggestion of light.

  
“Shit! What time is it?”

  
Eliot leaned back in his chair to glance at the digital readout on the kitchenette’s microwave.

  
“5:17 a.m.”

  
Quentin blinked.

  
“Did you say--we’ve been sitting out here that long? Shit! I have to be at work in less than four hours!”

  
“It’s a five-minute walk from here, and you’re welcome to use the shower if you don’t want to go home to change.”

  
“Well, uh--”

  
“I’m sure we can call down to the lobby for some extra toiletries, or you can use my shampoo if you like, there’s plenty.” Eliot stood and stretched, rolling his head from side to side. “Come on.”

  
“To where?”

  
“The beach. I want to stretch my legs.”

  
“You want to walk on the beach? With me?” Quentin glanced into the room. “Should we wake up Margo?”

  
“Only if you enjoy getting punched in the testicles. She’s not an early riser.”

  
“Oh.”

  
“Come on,” Eliot smiled, beckoning Quentin into the room, where he slid the balcony door shut. After leaving Margo a quick note, they rode the elevator down and stepped outside. The sky was growing lighter and the chilly breeze that skimmed off the Pacific ruffled Quentin’s and Eliot’s hair as they crossed the street and descended a small hill before stepping into the sand. They headed away from the pier, the water kissing the beach about six feet away.

  
“Do you ever come out here?” Eliot asked, and Quentin shook his head.

  
“It’s usually too crowded, except in maybe January or February. I don’t do well in crowds.” His right hand brushed against Eliot’s left as they walked. Quentin pulled away. “Sorry.”

  
“Don’t be,” Eliot replied, closing the space between them again. Quentin’s mind churned with curiosity.

  
“So, um . . . you and Margo go to school together?”

  
“We do.”

"You must have a lot of friends." 

“Some. What makes you say that?”

  
“I don’t know, uh . . . just seems like maybe you know all the best wines and food, like you know how to entertain. Like you’re a popular couple, that’s all.”

  
Eliot glanced down at him.

  
“A couple? Is that what you think we are?”

  
“I--” Quentin hoped the early light hid his blush. “Sometimes friends can be together that way, can’t they?"

  
“Sure, I suppose. Except Margo and I aren’t. We’re the closest of friends and we share almost everything--except physical intimacy. We aren’t or have never dated each other.”

  
“Oh.” Quentin tried for a casual tone even as his heart picked up a notch.

  
“Not that I can’t appreciate when a woman is attractive, which Margo certainly is. But when I’m in the bedroom or out on a date, I prefer the company and attention of men.” His fingers brushed against Quentin’s and the touch made Quentin longe for a place he wasn’t sure existed outside his own imagination. The idea made him feel so alone that his eyes filled with tears. Eliot paused as he glanced down and caught the sheen of moisture in the rising light.

  
“Quentin? What’s wrong?”

  
“Nothing.” Quentin dashed an arm across his eyes. “It’s not you--I’m sorry.”

  
“You have nothing to be sorry for. Please, tell me what’s upset you.”

  
“You’ll think I’m crazy! Maybe I am, maybe this whole thing is just some kind of psycho breakdown!” Quentin covered his face with both hands, horrified by his own behavior, but then a big, elegant hand rested on his right shoulder and steered him toward a nearby bench.

  
“Here, sit down a minute.”

  
Quentin sat as Eliot backed him up and the edge of the bench hit his knees.

  
“I’m sorry,” he said again, half-blinded by tears. Something cool and watery brushed against his cheeks and he realized Eliot was wiping away the moisture with a clean silk hankie--plum colored with white pinpoints--and pushing Quentin’s hair from his eyes with his free hand.

  
“Stop apologizing.” He dabbed at Quentin’s chin, where an errant tear dangled. “Was it something I said?”

  
“No! No, it’s not you, I’m glad we--uhm, it’s a nice walk. I guess I just realized how long it’s been since I talked to anyone or had a friend.” He glanced up at Eliot. “I don’t mean to assume anything.”

  
“I’d like to be your friend, Quentin.” Eliot flashed him a smile that made Quentin’s heart give a yo-yo style leap. “I’d like that a lot, and I want for you to trust me.”

  
“You’ll think I’m nuts if I tell you.”

  
“Try me anyway.”

  
Quentin looked out at the ocean, watching delicate whitecaps form, break apart, and form again, the tide knitting a lace edge on each cresting wave.

  
“You know how I told you about that accident I had?”

  
“Mmmhmm,” Eliot nodded, tucking his handkerchief away.

  
“Thing is, I don’t think it happened at all.”

  
“What makes you say that?”

  
Quentin blinked.

  
“You don’t think that’s crazy?”

  
“Why would I judge before I hear the rest?”

  
“I don’t know, I--I just think the reality seems even more unlikely. Or what I think the reality is.”

  
“Tell me.”

  
“It was probably some coma dream . . . some wishful thinking my mind made up to distract me. My dad says I came out here last summer for a vacation before Yale classes started, but I can’t find any evidence of it! No bus or plane ticket, no itinerary in my email, nothing. I’ve asked dad for copies of my medical records relating to the accident but he always finds a reason to stall me.” Quentin wiped his eyes again. “And Margo was right to question how weird it seems. I was going to Yale. I remember prepping for my admission interview but . . . there’s something else, Eliot. I remember being somewhere else, taking some kind of test. But when I try to focus on the memory--if that’s what it is--it just dissolves into nothing! I feel like I’m missing a part of my life, like someone plastered a big white patch over what’s supposed to be there. So much of it doesn’t make sense!”

  
“There’s a lot about life that doesn’t make sense . . . I think that’s true for everyone.” Eliot fought to keep his voice steady.

_He knows, somewhere those memories are locked away, not erased!_

  
“Maybe. But this memory doesn’t always feel like a dream! That test . . . I think it had something to do with ma--”

  
“Eliot!” A strident, winded voice cut through the sound of the sea and gulls gathering for a morning feed. Both men looked up to see Margo jogging toward them. A mental door slammed shut somewhere in Quentin’s mind and Eliot gave a silent but vehement curse at the interruption.

  
“Margo hey, what are--” Eliot got no further as she yanked him off the bench and marched him away from Quentin.

  
“So sorry need a minute, don’t go away!” She called to Quentin over one shoulder, and Eliot squirmed.

  
“Margo, what the hell!”

  
“Look, I’m sorry but this is important! I’ve been in contact with Alice and she’s been researching the mindwipe spell to see if she can help us help Q regain his memories. El, you can’t tell him about Brakebills, even if he thinks he remembers it!”

  
“Why not?”

  
“Because it would be like ripping a sticky bandage off a massive, fresh wound! Alice found out that telling a mindwiped student about their past can cause them to slip into a vegetative state! Telling Q he’s right about what he thinks he remembers will destroy his mind, El!”

  
Eliot closed his eyes a moment, reflecting on the overall unfairness of life.

  
“Suppose I don’t say magic is real,” he murmured, and Margo furrowed her brow.

  
“What?”

  
“Nothing--look, what else did Alice say? What if Quentin’s magic is stronger than Fogg’s memory patch?”

  
“Do you want to take that chance? Sure, you’ll have him back for what--five, ten minutes until his brain turns to jello?”

  
“We have to do something! It’s only a matter of time until the Beast finds him and does Christ knows what to him! We already know it eats magic--and magical people.” He glanced at Quentin, seemingly entranced by the movement of the ocean. “I can’t let that creature find him, Margo. None of this is his fault! Fogg just wanted someone to blame because he wasn’t strong enough to fight it!”

  
“Look, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

  
“An Amtrack?” Eliot asked, and Margo rolled her eyes.

  
“Do you want to hear this or be ridiculously bitter?”

  
“Can’t I do both?”

  
“Have I mentioned lately that you exhaust me?”

  
“Probably. So what’s our light?”

  
Margo pushed her hair over one shoulder.

  
“The light is if he remembers on his own, breaks the patch himself, then all his memories return.”

  
“So until then we just wait for the Beast to find a way back to our universe and make an entree out of an innocent first year?”

  
“I don’t see any other way for Quentin to get his memories back with his mind intact, El!”

  
Eliot shivered for more reasons than the breeze wafting in off the water as he pictured the Beast getting its hands on Quentin.

  
“I think I do. Bambi... you said before you trust me, right?”

Margo eyed him.

  
“Most of the time, why?”

  
“Because if Quentin is going to remember the truth about what he is, then we’re going to have to tell a lie--a whopper of a lie-- if we’re going to protect him.”


	5. Chapter Five

The following afternoon, Eliot checked himself and Margo out of the Shorebreak and lugged their bags down to the sidewalk.

  
“Wait here for me?” He asked, and Margo perched on a low concrete wall near the lobby doors.

  
“Fine. But if you’re not back in twenty minutes, I’m checking back in without you!”

  
“Fair enough.” Eliot kissed the top of her head and headed toward POW! as he mentally rehearsed the story he’d come up with. As he reached the door of the shop, Eliot added a bit of a wheeze to his breathing and stepped through the doorway. Quentin, clad in faded jeans and a shirt proclaiming HULK SMASH, turned from the spinner rack he’d been filling.

  
“Eliot?” He eyed the luggage. “Are you okay?”

  
“Quentin! Thank God you’re here!”

  
“I’m here, what’s wrong?”

  
“Someone hacked my bank account! It must have happened when I was shopping online last week. I canceled my card and the bank said I won’t be responsible for the charges the thief made, but it may take a few weeks to sort it all out.” Eliot hung his head, using the guilt he felt as motivation. “Until then, Margo and I are stranded.”

  
“Oh, that sucks!” Quentin went to him. “Where’s Margo? Is she okay?”

  
“She’s sitting outside the hotel--we had to check out because we don’t have any money for another night.”

  
“Where will you go?”

  
“I came to ask if you know about any shelters nearby that Margo and I can stay at until this all gets straightened out.”

  
“A shelter? No . . . I mean, I know there’s a few in the city but I’d hate to think of you guys stuck in that situation, especially when it wasn’t your fault. Why don’t you and Margo stay with me instead? My place isn’t a palace but I have some room and my couch folds out. You could stay until you get the money back.”

  
The sincerity in Quentin’s tone would have made Eliot confess the entire story if it didn’t mean Quentin ending up a breathing husk in a state hospital somewhere.

  
_You sweet kid_ , Eliot thought to himself. _Your brain might be on the fritz, but there’s nothing wrong with your heart._

  
“Eliot?” Quentin nudged, and the tall magician pulled himself out of his thoughts.

  
“I don’t know what to say, Quentin. Thank you.” He put a hand over his heart even as guilt continued to prick him. It was both unexpected and sharper than Eliot might have thought.

_I hope he understands about this when he gets his memories back._

  
“There’s a bus stop up the block. Take the number 9 and get off at the Palm Groves stop. My apartment complex is just around the corner--Pacific Cove. Uhm--” He dug around in his hip pocket and came up with a key on a single ring. A pewter dragon hung from one side. “It’s apartment 8B.” He handed Eliot the key. “What?” He asked in response to the other man’s stare.

  
“You’re so trusting.”

  
“I’m not worried. I don’t own anything worth stealing, and I have renter’s insurance. Besides, if you and Margo wanted to rob me, you would have already.”

  
“I suppose so. Are you sure about this?”

  
“I’m sure,” Quentin nodded. “I get off at three and it’s only a twenty-minute bus ride home.” He glanced at the Batman clock. “That way you guys won’t have to hang around the pier all day waiting for me.”

  
“You’re a prince, Quentin,” Eliot said, flashing him a smile that made Quentin feel like one. His heart gave a start of excitement at the thought of having that smile greeting him later when he arrived home.

  
“It’s nothing. You and Margo make yourselves comfortable.”

****

“So this is where Brakebills set him up?”

  
Margo glanced around the one-bedroom apartment. It featured a tidy kitchenette and matching furniture that must have come with the rental--there was little evidence of Quentin’s tastes there. A dark blue weighted blanket hung over the back of the couch, and a stack of books, each with a bookmark tucked in various places sat on an end table. Eliot didn’t have to look closely to recognize them as Fillory and Further installments 1-3. He sighed.

  
“At least Henry didn’t take that away from him.” He set his suitcase down.

  
“I can’t believe Q just handed you his house key. He doesn’t remember us and for all he knows, we could be axe murderers or looking to harvest his organs.”

  
“That would be a way to recoup our financial losses, if they were real. What do you think a kidney goes for these days?” Eliot asked as he made sure the front door was locked.

  
“Less than the trouble it’s probably worth,” Margo scoffed as she pulled back a curtain. “There’s a pool in the courtyard. Maybe Fogg really did feel badly for Q.”

  
“If he felt anything, it was pettiness. He’s blind, but it was the Beast, not Quentin, that caused it. He wasn’t strong enough to protect his students and needed a scapegoat!” Eliot scowled. The wound was still raw, even though they’d found Quentin in time.

  
“And we can’t even tell him,” Margo nodded as she sat on the couch.

  
“At least this way, he’s not alone.”

  
His tone caught Margo’s attention and she looked up at him.

  
“That’s worth the lie, El.”

  
“I know. So why do I feel so shitty about it?”

  
“I think you know.”

  
“I suppose that makes me a fool,” Eliot said as he draped himself across the couch and settled his head in Margo’s lap. She stroked a hand through his dark curls.

  
“Catching feelings doesn’t make you a fool, El.”

  
“Then what does it make me?”

  
“I think it makes you brave,” Margo smiled. “And motivated in a way I’ve never seen before.”

  
“Motivated, hmm?”

  
“I guess that’s the word. El . . . what is it about him? Can you tell me?”

  
“I would if I understood it. My infatuation over most men tend to burn out fast and I get bored. Quentin doesn’t bore me and it’s like . . . it’s like he’s a good-hearted knight sent into battle without not enough armor. He’s--pure, I guess, and I haven’t had much purity in my life. I suppose I want to protect that.”

  
Shocked at this uncharacteristic display of realism from someone who wore many masks and changed them with ease, Margo could only nod.

  
“Fair enough.”

  
“Do you think on some level he might know us? Not consciously, but on some plane where he still has all his memories? On the beach, he told me he has a memory or dream of taking a strange test and that he can’t find any real evidence of the accident that caused his memory loss. I think Quentin’s ambient magic is stronger than Fogg figured and maybe the mindwipe didn’t work like it should have.”

  
“If he’s questioning his reality, it’s possible.”

  
A key sounded in the door and Eliot sat up, pushing a hand through his hair to smooth it. Quentin shoved his way into the apartment a moment later, laden with grocery bags and a number of smaller brown takeout bags.

  
“Hey guys!”

  
“Quentin hi, you’re back early.”

  
Quentin nodded as he set the bags on the counter.

  
“It was really quiet at the store--the tourists don’t really start showing until May--and Alan’s wife showed up to help out so he let me leave. I got us some snacks and stuff, plus Johnny Rockets for supper.” Quentin started to unpack the food.

  
“That’s thoughtful Q--uh, Quentin.” Eliot corrected himself, but his friend smiled.

  
“What did you call me? Q?”

  
“Yes, sorry, I have a habit of bestowing nicknames on people.”

  
Quentin hid a blush as he dug through one of the bags.

  
“I don’t mind.”

  
“All right, good--here, let me help with that.” Eliot pulled out two bunches of bananas, some pudding, and a bottle of wine from one bag.

  
“Mostacto!” Eliot grinned to Margo. “The lad pays attention!”

  
“I wasn’t sure what you like and I’m not a great cook, uhm . . . I usually make frozen pizzas or just order in.”

  
“That’s okay, I’m not overly fussy--” He held up a finger to Margo, who snapped her mouth shut and rolled her eyes “--but I do like to cook and I could show you a few simple dishes. It's the least I can do.”

  
“I’m not a kitchen guy, but sure.” Quentin smiled. “I got us burgers, I hope that’s okay.”

  
“Yes, it’s fine.” Eliot opened a few cabinets until he found a meager collection of plates and helped Quentin lay out the food. “Shall we?”

****

After supper, Quentin made up the fold-out couch with fresh sheets, two blankets, and some extra pillows from his bed. The trio sat, talked, and drank until well after 11 p.m., until Quentin began to blink and yawn. He headed to his bedroom with a few sleepy apologies, leaving Eliot and Margo to settle in on the couch. Eliot dozed off around one and slept soundly until three, when his full bladder prodded him awake. He slid off the couch, careful not to wake Margo, cocooned in one of the blankets, and felt his way to the bathroom. He thumbed the light on, glad the toilet lid was already up, and emptied his bladder as his mind cruised on that auto-pilot setting that seemed to exist specifically for this task.

  
His duty discharged, Eliot flushed, washed his hands, and flicked off the light. He stepped into the hallway, yawning, then started as a harsh sound came from the room across the hall. The door was closed but unlatched, and no light shone through the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. Eliot stepped away and that sound came again--a muffled sob. The tall magician hesitated for nearly thirty seconds before stepping back toward the door, knowing he could no more ignore Quentin’s sobs than he could the pull of his own telekinesis when it decided to show itself. He eased the door open a crack.

  
Quentin sat up against a sea of pillows, his knees drawn to his chest. The complex’s parking lot lighting gave off a dim glow and Eliot saw the bedroom was small but less spartan than the rest of the apartment. A framed promotional poster from Labyrinth hung on one wall and a stack of books dominated the dresser. Next to the books sat a floppy-looking horse plushie with cloth eyes and a potbelly. It probably would have seemed strangely out of place to anyone who didn’t recognize comfort objects or never had the need for one.

  
“Quentin?” Eliot nudged the door open wider. “Are you all right?”

  
“Uh!” Quentin looked up as the noise was jerked out of him in surprise, like a yo-yo snapping upward during a trick. In the low light, Eliot could see tears slipping down Quentin’s cheeks and pattering onto the comforter bunched between his knees and chest.

  
“Oh . . . hey.” Quentin wiped his face with both hands in a quick gesture that tugged his lower eyelids down, making him appear haggard in a way that reminded Eliot of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” “Yeah . . . fine. Just, uhm, had a bad dream. Did I wake you?”

  
“No, all the wine we drank did.” Eliot took another step into the room. “Are you sure you’re all right? You look awfully upset for one bad dream.”

  
“I'm--I don’t know.” Quentin gave a helpless-looking shrug before covering his face with both hands. Eliot made up his mind all at once, crossing the room in a few decisive steps. He sat on the edge of the bed and glanced around for tissues. Seeing none, he retreated to the bathroom for a strip of Charmin. By the time he returned, Quentin seemed calmer but still sniffling, and Eliot handed the tissue over.

  
“Thanks,” Quentin nodded. He wiped his eyes and nose before tossing it out. Eliot patted his shoulder.

  
“Better?”

  
“Yeah, I guess so.” Quentin wiped his eyes one more time. “You must think I’m a complete basket case.”

  
“Baskets are for picnics and guillotines.”  
“Oh.” Quentin blinked. Eliot settled himself on the edge of the bed.

  
“I have to say, there’s a bit more of you here than in the other rooms.” He nodded to the stack of books. “Your to-read pile?”

  
“Yeah actually,” Quentin smiled. “How’d you guess?”

  
“You just strike me as a reader, that’s all.” Eliot’s gaze lingered on the floppy horse. Quentin cleared his throat.

  
“That’s a buckwheat horse. You can warm him--it--in the microwave and put him on your back or neck or stomach when they ache. My dad bought it for me when I was still in the coma.” The stuffed animal, in fact, had a name: Cozy Horse, named after the giant yet gentle mechanical horse that roamed throughout the Fillory and Further books, the one with the soft felt back wider than two king mattresses, but Quentin would rather have his scrotum flattened with a meat tenderizer than admit that out loud.

  
Especially to Eliot.

  
“Sounds comfy,” Eliot nodded, and before you ask, no, I don’t think it’s weird or strange.”

  
“You’re some kind of mind reader,” Quentin said with a touch of bemusement.

  
“No, I just don’t think you should be judged for owning a holistic pillow because it happens to be in the shape of a horse.” Eliot knew that Margo would likely laugh herself into a hernia if she’d heard that, as judging people had been their specialty at Brakebills, but this was Q.

  
“Thanks.”

  
“It’s no trouble. Do you want to tell me about your dream? It might make you feel better.”

  
“There are times I don’t think I’ll ever feel better,” Quentin replied softly. “But all right.” He swallowed in anxiety and Eliot watched his Adam’s apple bob. “I’m in this room . . . it feels like I’m sitting at a long table, maybe. There might be other people there too but I can’t see them. It’s like--you know how in Photoshop there’s that blurring tool? It’s like that. Like my surroundings have been smeared around. So I sit there and it’s like I know something awful is about to happen but I don’t move. I don’t know if it’s because I can’t or if I’m too afraid.” Quentin’s hands tightened into fists, so tight they might have cut into his palms if he hadn’t already bitten them down to the quick on both hands. Eliot touched the knuckles of Quentin’s right hand and then laid his hand over them./ He felt the fingers unclench a little. “And it’s horrifying because something inside me knows what’s coming and the rational part of me can’t react.”

  
“Do you ever see what it is?” Eliot asked, and Quentin’s fingers loosened and tilted upward in a silent plea. Eliot slid his own fingers between them without speaking, and Quentin gripped Eliot’s larger hand with his own as he continued.

  
“Moths,” he said at last. “But not just a few or even a dozen. It--there are thousands, maybe even millions, like some unimaginable nest of caterpillars decided to build their chrysalises all at the same and then that nest just--burst. I was choking on the dust from their wings, I couldn’t see because of all the fluttering. It was like being consumed.” His fingers tightened around Eliot’s.” “The noise of it . . . I couldn’t hear and then--” Quentin swallowed hard. “I realized something was inside the cloud--you know, the cloud of moths and my hands shot out in front of me.” He began to tremble. “And--and whatever was inside that cloud just, uhm, it ate all of my fingers. Just snipped them off with its teeth, one by one. Like they were made of paper instead of flesh and bone--” That last word caught on fresh tears, like a scrap of fabric tangled in barbed wire. Eliot squeezed his hand.

  
“That sounds terrifying. No wonder it woke you.”

  
“It’s not the first time I’ve had it. I mean, not that exact dream, but the moths.” Quentin looked up at Eliot. “Do you think I’m going crazy?”

  
“No. Maybe it’s just your subconscious. Missing memories trying to make themselves known.”

  
Quentin glanced down at their joined hands.

  
“Want to hear something that might sound even crazier?”

  
“Sure.”

  
“The only thing I’m completely sure about right now is you.”

  
Warmth spread through Eliot’s body at the words and Quentin tilted his chin upward, eyelids at half-mast. Eliot traced the curve of Quentin’s upper lip with the same longing as he had when he’d first laid eyes on him back at Brakebills. When Quentin didn’t shift back or look away, Eliot bent his head and closed the distance between their mouths, touching Quentin’s with his own, brushing, gauging. Quentin gave a breathy gasp of surprise or discovery and his fingers clamped around Eliot’s in a sudden spasm. Eliot guided the kiss, wanting Quentin to experience it rather than worry about performance. When he pulled away, Quentin dropped his gaze and worried his lower lip with his teeth. Eliot slipped a hand under Quentin’s chin and lifted his head.

  
“Don’t tell me you were about to apologize.”

  
“I--I don’t want to dump all my hangups on you. You have enough worries.”

  
“I’m sure those will pan out.” He touched Quentin’s face with his other hand. “And if I’m something you’re sure about, then I’m extremely flattered.”

  
“Flattered is what people say when they appreciate the thought but are otherwise attached,” Quentin said, and Eliot frowned.

  
“You think I’m attached to someone?”

  
Quentin gasped nervous laughter.

  
“I don’t know, you--you’re--” Quentin gestured at him. “I’d be surprised if you were single, that’s all. Someone like you.”

  
“Thank you, Q, but the truth is I’m not attached to anyone, unless you count Margo, and that’s a different kind of attached. Why would you assume I have a romantic partner?”

  
_Does this guy own a mirror?_ Quentin asked himself, then fumbled as he realized the question wasn’t rhetorical and that Eliot was waiting for a reply.

  
“I . . . you’re . . . you know.” Quentin cleared his throat. “You’re not exactly hard to look at. You’re funny and you’re a good listener.”

  
A slow smile blossomed into a grin and Eliot chuckled.

  
“Thank you, Q.”

  
“Sure. Uhm . . . can we kiss again?”

  
“We can definitely kiss again,” Eliot replied, charmed by the request and touched by Quentin’s thoughtfulness. He lowered his head and pressed his lips to the younger man’s, delighting in their shape and taste. He coaxed Quentin a bit more, encouraging him to part his lips. Quentin leaned into the kiss, his hand tightening around Eliot’s as their tongues touched. Eliot suppressed a moan as his cock stirred under the black-and-red lounge pants he wore. When Quentin pulled away, his cheeks were flushed and Eliot suspected he was more than a bit excited himself.

  
“Stay with me?” Quentin asked, and the part of Eliot that liked this for them--unencumbered by Brakebills, the demands of learning magic, and a hundred other distractions--wanted to climb into Quentin’s bed and love him into a dreamless, pleasure-soaked sleep. But the other Eliot, the one who knew those distractions were a part of Quentin’s life, one he was supposed to remember and enjoy, (despite the presence of evil magical beings,) and that he, Eliot, couldn’t take that from him. It was a life of magic for them both or not at all, and Eliot knew that without question.  
 _Quentin, my dearest heart, I’d give my soul to be able to tell you the truth._  
"I--"

  
“It’s too quick,” Quentin said suddenly. “I shouldn’t have--I’m sorry.”

  
“No! Don’t be sorry. I do want to stay.”

  
“But?”

  
“But I want it to be for the right reasons. Q, your memories aren’t clear--”

  
“Then why shouldn’t I make new ones?” Quentin demanded. “I like you, Eliot, I like you a lot and I’m tired of being alone and afraid and unsure! Isn’t that reason enough?”

  
Eliot warred with himself for what seemed like an eternity before he found he could look Quentin in the eye again.

  
“I want it to be. God, you have no idea how much I want that, Q.”

  
“You like me, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

  
“Then stay.” Quentin squeezed his hand. “Please.”

  
He pulled the covers down and Eliot relented, pulling his legs up and under the white linen sheets. Quentin curled up against him like a happy cat, and Eliot realized then how lonely Quentin must have been these past few months; the unfamiliar surroundings, the loss of his true memories, the anxiety of missing something you couldn’t be sure was lost in the first place.

  
“Thank you, Eliot,” Quentin murmured in the darkness, and Eliot shifted into his side until he could put an arm around the smaller man.

“Get some sleep,” he replied. Quentin’s breathing settled into an autonomic rhythm about fifteen minutes later and Eliot remained awake and watchful, proof against the nightmares and dark, clutching hands searching for a way out of their world into Quentin’s to feed on his magic and flesh.


	6. Chapter Six

“Do you have to keep looking at me like that?”

  
Eliot and Margo sat outside a Starbucks about two blocks from the beach as they waited for Quentin to join him on his lunch break.

  
“Looking at you like what?” Margo asked. “Like you climbed into Quentin’s bed in the middle of the night? Silly Bambi, imagining things again!” She drained the rest of her passion fruit tea and tossed the cup into a nearby recycling bin.

  
“Okay, so maybe I did--”

  
“Maybe you did?”

  
“Okay fine, I did!” Eliot stirred the melted ice around in his own drink and jabbed at the remaining piece with the straw. “But he asked me to stay, Margo, and if you’d seen his face . . . I don’t know what might have happened if I’d rejected him!”  
“So sharing his bed under seriously false pretenses is the better option?”

  
“Nothing happened! And my intentions aren’t false. The story we gave Q is, yes, but is it any worse than the false life Henry is making him live?”

  
“Okay, granted but El . . . you have to step carefully here. It’s our good intentions, but it’s Quentin’s life.”

  
“Duh,” Eliot replied, but it was more of a sigh than a clap-back as he tossed his cup away.

  
“Hey guys!”

  
Eliot glanced up to see Quentin walking toward them. He reflected that although their friend had lost his recent memories, his nerd aesthetic was still intact. He still wore what Eliot thought of as dad jeans--loose and shapeless--and a dark tee with a dark green overshirt. The shirt was equally oversized, and Eliot wondered, as he often did back at Brakebills, if the too-big clothing was Quentin’s attempt of creating a built-in shield between himself and the rest of the world.

  
“Hey you,” Eliot smiled, making room for Quentin at the patio table. “What’s your sugary poison? It’s on me.”

  
“You don’t have to do that.”

  
“Oh hush . . . I still have a bit of cash on me.” Eliot produced a ten-dollar bill from one pocket. “And after all you’ve done for us, this is a pittance.”

  
“Have you heard from your bank?” Quentin dropped his gaze and toyed with the hem of his shirt. “Do--do you know when you’re going home?”

  
“It might be a few more days, maybe a week,” Eliot replied, although he would no more leave Quentin on his own than he’d give up magic and become a priest. “We’ll be around a bit longer.” He got to his feet. “C’mon, let’s get you a drink.” Eliot pushed the door open to a blast of coffee-fragrant air. As they queued up in line, Quentin’s hand bumped against Eliot’s. Eliot hooked Quentin’s pinky with his own and tugged his hand closer, interlocking their fingers. A blush spread over Quentin’s cheeks but he gave Eliot’s hand a gentle squeeze.

  
“About last night . . .” Quentin said with a hesitant air. “I hope I didn’t pressure you to stay with me.”

  
“One thing you’ll learn about me, Q, is that I don’t respond to pressure. I chose to stay because I wanted to. Because I like you. Because I wanted you to feel safe. Now, what kind of drink do you want?”

  
“A peppermint mocha?”

  
Eliot grinned and handed the barista his ten.

  
“You heard the man--and keep the change.”

****

Twenty minutes later, Quentin was walking back to POW!, his half-finished drink in one hand, the smell of Eliot’s cologne on his fingers and lingering on the cup from when he’d accepted a sip before he and his friends had parted at the corner. Quentin suspected he was falling in love with Eliot, a realization that caused more pain than he cared to admit. There might be some texts, a few emails, but those would likely trickle down to nothing after Eliot became absorbed with his life at school again.  
 _There’s no place for me in his life once that happens. Maybe he won’t mean to lose touch, but there’s a reason long-distance relationships have a shitty track record._

  
The sound of the Pacific grew louder as Quentin rounded the corner onto Main Street, the waves murmuring against the sand to his right. It was cool yet sunny, and Alan had the door to the comic shop propped open with the multicolored concrete block.

  
“Hey Alan, I’m back,” he said, and the older man glanced up.

  
“Glad to see it. I have to go home for an hour or so and I want to close up early so you can take backroom inventory.”

  
“Oh . . . okay, is anything wrong?”

  
“No. The wife ordered this antique mirror and it weighs a ton--the frame is pure silver. She wants me to come home and help make room for it before the delivery truck brings it there.” Alan crooked a finger at Quentin and he followed his employer into the back. Among unopened boxes of comics, old rolled-up promotional posters, and the mop and bucket they used to clean the restroom, was a massive mirror with a silver frame at least three inches wide. The mirror dwarfed Quentin by about nine inches--he’d never seen anything like it.

  
“Jesus!”

  
“Yep, it’s a big one, all right. Had them send it here for now so it’d be safe until we can get the hardware hung at the house.” Alan pulled the store keys from his pocket. “Gonna lock you in for safety’s sake as well--you remember the alarm code?”

  
“Uh huh.”

  
“All right then.” Alan walked through the showroom. “I’ll be back before you clock out.”

  
“Sure,” Quentin nodded as he turned toward the time clock to punch back in. He heard the heavy steel lock click behind him but never saw Alan's eyes turn a bright, unnatural blue, like the wings of an azure moth.

  
Quentin escaped to the back room once he was alone where he pulled up a Spotify playlist on his phone and began inventory on the stacks of boxes. He worked consistently and without the need for supervision, a trait Alan often praised, for several hours. Every once in a while he would catch a glimpse of himself in the huge mirror and a cold finger of unease would press against his spine. His memory seemed to grope for something, an event he couldn’t bring into focus, but Quentin found that he didn’t like turning his back on the thing.

  
Five p.m. came and went with no sign or Alan or a moving truck. Texts and calls went unanswered. Outside, the light was fading, turning the Pacific into a dark, restless, and bruised expanse. Main Street quieted as a late-winter breeze chased down its length, hurried along by ocean currents. Quentin watched the sun vanish and reached for his phone when a sound from the back room made his hands go cold. Goosebumps rose on his arms like the hackles of an angry dog. The sound had a strange wobbly quality to it, like someone bending a thin piece of sheet metal back and forth, and backing that was a reedy, consistent cry, as if a small animal was being tortured in the distance. Quentin set his phone back down, his hand trembling.

  
“H-Hello? Is someone there? Alan?” Quentin called. There was a rear exit at the back of the shop and although Alan kept it clear to comply with local fire codes, it was rarely, if ever, used.

  
_It’s the wind or something, blowing through some trash or a loose piece of metal on the dumpster out back. So don’t be such a baby._

Except the noise was definitely coming from the back room, not from outside. Quentin opened his mouth to call out again when every drop of blood in his veins seemed to cool and turn to slushy, sluggish ice. Moths of all shapes and sizes were flocking from the back room, filling the air with the powder of a million shed microscales. They began to fill the main room of the store and as Quentin watched, his feet rooted to the floor in terror, the massive mirror filled the doorway, moving as if drawn there by an invisible magnet. The reflective surface rippled like a still pond disturbed by a tossed stone and a form stepped from within, clad in a grey wool suit and sharply-polished shoes. Quentin screamed but no sound issued from this throat--horror snatched the strength from the cry as easily as the wind snatches away a scrap of paper.

  
The figure’s face wasn’t visible; instead, it was completely obscured by more of the moths. Some of them were as large as Quentin’s hands and threatened to choke him with the offal of their tenebrous wings. Quentin's knees unlocked and he spilled to the floor before his adrenal glands flooded his body with flight response. He crawled, his hair hanging in his eyes, lungs suddenly working like crazed bagpipes, until he made it under the sturdy steel table, which housed two dozen cardboard boxes filled with a variety of comics. It shook suddenly and Quentin clung to the center support. One of the boxes’ signs, reading BAGGED 80s COMICS, MARVEL, OTHERS, $3 EACH, fluttered to the floor.

  
“Come out, come out, little lamb!” A purring yet mocking voice called. “I know you’re there!”

  
“What’s happening? Leave me alone . . . I don’t understand!” Quentin cried as he continued to cling to the table support.

  
“Of course you don’t, dear boy. I would explain but it would turn your brain to mush, and I much prefer them firm. Now, come to me, little one, and meet your end!”

  
“Who are you? What do you want from me?” Quentin asked in a querulous tone, and the table shuddered and shook. Alan had bolted it to the floor as proof against earthquakes, but now the creature was ripping it free of the thick bolts as if they were thumbtacks.

  
“Don’t question me, child! Just come out and die while you can still do it quickly!”

  
Quentin crawled backward, gasping out his fear in ragged breaths as his death bore down on him from above.

****

“El, if you look out that window one more time, you’re going to wear out the glass.”

  
Eliot turned from the window that looked over the parking lot of Quentin’s apartment complex.

  
“It’s dark out, Margo! Q wasn’t on the bus like usual--he’s over an hour late! There’s something wrong.”

  
“How do you know that? He might have gotten held up at work or maybe the bus broke down.” Margo switched off the TV. “Are you sure you aren’t being paranoid about this thing because of what Q told you about his dreams?”

  
“If I am, then I am.” Eliot raised his hands and opened a travel portal with a few quick tuts. “I’m going down there.”

  
“Oh Jesus.” Margo tossed the remote aside. “Fine, then I’ll come too. If Quentin has gotten himself into a mess, you’ll need me to help bail his narrow ass out of it!”

****

“You really do want to die slowly, don’t you, boy?” The Beast snarled as it tossed the table, boxes and all, to one side.

Quentin didn’t waste any more breath on screaming or asking questions as he bolted for the storeroom. He squeezed through the space between the doorframe and the mirror, jamming his face into the opening like a frantic mouse trying to escape a hungry tomcat. He slipped through, for once grateful of his slender, smaller frame, and threw all his weight against the mirror from the other side.

  
_It’s real, it’s all real somehow and oh God that thing is here, it’s here with me now!_

  
“I was going to free you of your worthless life before I fed, child, but now I hope you understand you’ve earned being devoured alive! Perhaps I’ll start with your eyes, or your small intestine!” The creature threatened as it pursued him. Quentin took a deep breath and pushed against the mirror with every ounce of strength he possessed, cheeks flushed, the cords on his neck standing out. The mirror rocked, then wobbled, then tipped as the Beast stepped up to it. It toppled onto him, pinning him to the floor as glass exploded across the floor in a coughing jangle of jagged shards. The Beast roared in fury and pain and Quentin leapt over him and the fallen mirror, swatting moths aside as he raced for the front door. He gave a wild look over one shoulder as the mirror frame began to heave up and down. His right hand closed around the shop’s front door handle, pulled--but it held fast.

  
_Fuck, the alarm system!_

  
Quentin jabbed at the keypad next to the door, but it only gave an insolent buzz as his panicked mind scrambled the four-digit code. Behind him, the Beast gave another bellow of anger as it managed to toss the wrecked mirror aside. Quentin screamed, a thin, involuntary sound, and then a flash of lavender and white light illuminated the sidewalk outside. Eliot’s face appeared in the storefront’s display window a moment later, his amber eyes filling with a kind of fury Quentin had never seen in anyone before. Margo appeared a moment later, making a dropping motion with her hands as she shouted,

  
“Quentin! Get down!”

  
Quentin hit the floor and covered his head with both arms as the large display window warped, contracted, and then exploded inward as if set with a dynamite charge. The Beast roared in a challenging tone, and Quentin risked a glance up. Eliot was stepping through the shattered remains of the window, his eyes blazing, his hands raised.

“Get the fuck away from Quentin, you multidimensional shit stain!”

  
The Beast snarled and charged Eliot, who force-pushed him back against the wall and held him there. Margo stepped through the shattered window and helped Quentin to his feet. He clung to her for a moment and then looked up at Eliot, who was approaching the Beast, his tall form seeming to vibrate.

  
“We have to help him!” Quentin said, and Margo locked one arm around his.

“No! Don’t distract him! If he loses concentration we’re all dead!”

  
The Beast struggled and hurled threats at Eliot as he approached, moths popping and crackling into insignificant motes of dust all around him. The largest of them that obscured the Beast’s face imploded as Eliot stepped close and revealed the face of what appeared to be an ordinary man of middle age, with watery grey eyes and a somewhat weak chin.

  
“You used the mirror and put Quentin’s boss in thrall to get to Q. The silver helped amplify your magic, but it’s a double-edged sword.” Eliot opened one hand and a shard of the mirror’s frame, nearly seven inches long and jagged at one end, leapt into it like a trained pet. “Because it also fed on some of your power.” Eliot’s voice tremored slightly. “And when you came after Quentin? That’s when you really fucked yourself, Moth Man. And speaking of double-edged swords--” Eliot drove the silver shard into the creature’s lower belly and dragged it upward, flaying him open. A flurry of moths burst forth, flying from the wound, his mouth, his nostrils, until the wool suit fell to the floor, empty and harmless. The moths dissolved as they left the body, their dark magic rendered inert by the silver. The shard dropped from Eliot’s hand and he spilled to the floor, every ounce of magic and telekinesis spent.

  
“Eliot!” Quentin stumbled over spilled boxes of comics before pitching to his knees to lift Eliot’s head into his lap. “Eliot, oh God . . .” He leaned over to kiss Eliot’s lips and the magician’s amber eyes tracked to Quentin’s face as Margo came to kneel by his side. “Eliot? Please . . .”

  
A smile quirked the corners of Eliot’s mouth.

  
“Glad to see you, kid,” he murmured, and the words, spoken by Eliot at the steps of the Brakebills first-year building after the Beast had attacked the first time, fit like a key into Quentin’s trapped self. He gasped, light filling his dark eyes until it turned into tears that dripped down his face. He turned to Margo, his memories--his true memories--filling up all the empty spaces and wiping away Fogg’s magical patch. Margo smiled wryly as she placed a hand on his cheek.

  
“Welcome back, Q.”


	7. Chapter Seven

_Two days later_

Consciousness found its way back to Eliot with a cartful of aches and pains. As awareness settled around him, he realized he was in the Brakebills infirmary, and someone was holding his hands.

  
_More than someone,_ he thought muzzily, realizing one hand was slender and soft, the other larger with chewed nails.  
“Margo? Q?” He asked before his eyes were fully open, and Quentin’s hand squeezed his.

  
“El? Hey!” Quentin’s other hand touched his face and Eliot forced his eyes open. Quentin’s face came into slow focus.  
“Q,” He smiled, and Quentin leaned over until their foreheads touched.

  
“You woke up. Oh God, you woke up.”

  
“Was there any doubt?” Eliot asked, pushing Quentin’s hair aside as it tickled his face.

  
“You’d be surprised,” Margo sighed as she lifted his hand, kissed it. “I’ll go find Professor Lipson.”

  
Quentin leaned back but took Eliot’s other hand as Margo left.

  
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but what are you doing here?” Eliot asked.

  
“Well, after all that happened, Dean Fogg realized I wasn’t the one who summoned the Beast that day in class. He readmitted me, along with a full pardon and a chance to catch up with the rest of my class. Alice said she’d help me study.”

  
“And your memories?”

  
Quentin let go of one of Eliot’s hands and tapped his own temple.

  
“Intact. I remember most of my time in California, too.” He gave Eliot a shrewd look. “And where did you learn to con people like that?”

  
“Con? I never!”

  
“My friend and I are on vacation! Oh Quentin, someone stole my bank information!” Quentin mimed him, and Eliot cleared his throat.

  
“You didn’t have to be so trusting. And it was the only way to protect you.”

  
“I know, El. Margo told me everything while you were asleep.”

  
“So you forgive me?” Eliot asked, and Quentin rolled his eyes.

  
“No, El, how dare you travel from one end of the country to the other, disobey your dean, and risk getting expelled yourself to keep me from being eaten alive by some evil magical asshole!”

  
“Have I ever told you that you reach peak cuteness when you’re bratty? I want to kiss and spank you at the same time.”

  
Quentin’s ears went red.

  
“Yeah, uhm, anyway, Dean Fogg says Alan probably won’t remember being held in thrall by the Beast. He sent someone out there to give Alan a small-scale mindwipe and funds to fix the shop.” Quentin sighed. “I feel bad--Alan was always nice to me.”

  
“It wasn’t your fault, Q. Blame Henry for expelling you without a good reason.”

  
“But you didn’t give up on me,” Quentin smiled. “You and Margo came for me.”

  
“We did. Besides, I had a promise to keep.”

  
Quentin frowned.

  
“What promise?”

  
“I said I’d find you--not to say magic is real but to seduce you--”

  
“And so lift my spirits so life retains its sparkle for decades,” Quentin finished with him.

  
“I see there’s nothing wrong with your memory anymore,” Eliot smiled, and Quentin reached down to stroke a hand through Eliot’s dark curls.

  
“Can we start those decades now?” He asked, and Eliot grinned at the light in Quentin’s dark eyes. He drew the younger man close, kissed him.

  
“No time like the present, Q.”

THE END


End file.
